A small remote island, a series of murders, a detective, and a number of bourgeois suspects (yes, and the maid): sounds familiar? If it is, then you already know what to look for in this new prestige, 4-episode miniseries out of Spain: a good (very) old-fashioned murder mystery. But does all evidence point towards a good watch?
José Coronado (Innocent, The Snow Girl) brings his decades-old honed chops into the main character of Benjamin Basil, an aging Spanish actor, who once claimed fame as Sherlock Holmes in a series of Conan Doyle film adaptations. On the outs from Hollywood and barely sober, he follows a producer friend, Fonseca (Gonzalo De Castro), to discuss a potential new role on his boat… and ends up on Santa Agueda island, off the coast of Mallorca, in a remote establishment managed by no-nonsense, mannered Mrs. Ausländer (Maribel Verdú). There, he must indulge the abrasive character of Fonseca and his new starlet girlfriend Vicky (Cristina Kovani), and meets aspiring crime novelist Francisco Foxá (Martiño Rivas). But then, after a stormy night, a body hanging from a rope is discovered. What is thought to be a suicide, through a few observations from Benjamin, soon turns out to be a murder, with no one safe in the hotel. Let the games begin…
To somewhat enjoy the short 4-episode run of The Final Problem, one must buy into the idea of a veteran actor having played Sherlock Holmes a dozen times going full method. That is, as preparation, getting to master the keen, almost supernatural senses of observation of the legendary detective, and apply it to have some strong deductions and knowledge on any person he meets. This is the main twist of the project: “He is not Holmes, he just played it several times in movies!” But it seems like writers of this adaptation of a bestselling book (Alberto Macías,Carlos MolineroandMarisol Farré) do not intend to play into the meta aspect: Basil is Holmesian in his demeanor and findings, and soon the hotel depends on his undeniable skills to shed light on the happenings on the island as the arrival of the police is (of course) delayed. Nothing really happens with the conceit: Basil does not use his status to stroke his actor’s ego, or get mocked or dismissed by other characters. Instead, The Final Problem plays its mystery partition frustratingly straight. On the platform which brought us the sequels to Knives Out, that is certainly a choice.
Part of the fun of these mysteries, in movies or a series, is to assemble a tapestry of characters playing suspect and sometimes (not always) hamming it up. Alas, even with all his screentime, the Watson to Basil’s Sherlock barely registers: as Foxá eventually raises concerns or suspicions towards our amateur sleuth, the character is not either duplicitous or sympathetic enough to hold weight. The best friend of victim Elisa Mander, rich widow Adela Figueroa, fares somewhat better: María Valverde plays ice queen with abandon and a sense of raw intelligence. As it stands, the show sometimes shows glimpses of wit and self-awareness for the genre, but it is very bogged down by a glacial pace. Even as everybody gets to be a suspect, like all good one-location mysteries, the sense of suspense or paranoia never quite reaches momentum.
Even as it transpires that the criminal mastermind may or may not take a page out of Conan Doyle’s lore, the series and its characters remain with their poker face for the longest; the mission gets that much harder when you have to play along with the findings and deductions yourself at home, only to find out they don’t really differ from an old-fashioned game of Clue. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of The Final Problem is that it barely lets us see behind the curtain of its characters until the finale (a finale which, in itself, may be questionable). Ho-hum treatment of Basil’s sobriety aside, there is never any spark into this mystery, only some tepidness.
If you liked The Final Problem, watch
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Verdict
Does not hold together as a whodunit, barely holds interest as a piece of Sherlock Holmes fanfiction/variation. It’s elementary: the solution to The Final Problem is that it just has to be skipped.
